The Lonesome Road

There seems to be some problem with my copy of Firefox (seeing that I haven’t seen this problem reported anywhere else) - it’s a memory hog. Big time.

I’ve been keeping a track and have seen that when it first starts, it takes up around 6Mb of memory. Continue using it normally - i.e opening multiple links in tabs, genereal surfing and maybe thrown in a download into the mix (though I haven’t seen this have much of an effect) and the memory usage jumps upto 8-fold.

Right now, firefox is using 41,524K of memory. I’m pretty sure that’s high for a browser. Also, once it takes up all this memory, there seems to be a sluggishness to the browser - pages do not load, nor do they refresh. All in all the browser seems to be stuck in limbo.

Closing all instances of the browser does free the memory, but once restarted, the process simply repeats. I’ve been seeing this behaviour from the 1.0.0 to 1.0.2 releases - and I’m not sure whether this is a problem on my system or if it is a browser error - though I have heard that firefox does have a memory leak error.

That’s all from me - will be putting up new photos soon. You can also check out some new photos at my DeviantArt site.

Enjoy!

Well, I’ve finally found a way to be lazy following my fav pages - Blogs, Slashdot et al. Welcome to the world of live bookmarks (I know it’s there - this is *sarcasm!*).

Anyway, over the last few days, I’ve been following the story of Clocky, a clock created by the gnomes at MIT.

These dudes are really devious - the clock moves once you hit the snooze button, forcing you to chase it to turn off the noise. For alternate solutions, follow the smart comments made by the users on the slashdot forum.

That’s all from me today. Adios!

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
Shot by poachers in the night
Soon will any mortal eye
See thy fearful symmetry?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
Hunted for it’s claws so bright
Teeth and skin put in a sack,
To make an aphrodasiac.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
Oh, the nature of your plight,
Lord of the jungle, king of the land,
Dead beneath a hunter’s hand.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
Fade away to the night,
The world of man is death to thee,
Run, run far and be free…

(With apologies to William Blake’s - The Tiger . )

The tiger population is being decimated all over India, and so far Project Tiger has not helped one bit. The poachers have the run of the reserves and most of the officials seem to think that these are “punishment” posts. The reserves require around 42 officers to patrol, but at present there are only 17 officers at any stage. This apathy will soon cause the death of most majestic of felines…

Let’s save the tiger - before it’s too late…

Just read this piece of Techconnect Magazine . I’m still rubbing my eyes in disbelief! All those who are not willing to try linux - you guys are out of excuses now. No need to download anything - just head here and register. The dudes at Ubuntu Linux have decided to help the world a little. They are providing Ubuntu Linux for free - yup it’s free. And they are also providing free shipping around the world.

I’ve tried Ubuntu, and while it may not provide all the features that the RedHat or Suse distros do, it’s stable and very usable. Give it a go - you may be pleasantly surprised

Later!

Here are three Weapons of Bowling Destruction :

Rahul Dravid :
Team : India
Venue : Eden Gardens, Kolkata
Opposition : Pakistan
Scores: 110 of 222 (15 x 4, 1 x 6) - First Innings
135 of 283 (15 x 4) - Second innings

The Wall stood tall again. A good century in the first innings was followed by another in the second,though, the second ton was a lot better. He walked in at a time when India were 23/2 and Pakistan were back in the game. Solid in defence, and punishing the loose ball, Dravid laid the foundation for mammoth total for India. Oh - and by the way - India did win

Adam Gilchrist :
Team : Australia
Venue : Wellington
Opposition : Who?? Well, New Zealand
Score : 162 of 146 (22 x 4, 5 x 6) - First Innings

What can I say about this man. He wields the bat like a bludgeon - and leaves the opposition stunned. Big time. A clean striker of the ball, Gilchrist capitalizes on his ability to spot the ball early. I was watching the match highlight a few minutes back - and believe me - I felt very, very sorry for the bowlers. This man cut, pulled, hooked and drove almost at will. Amazing stuff to watch - but not if you are in the opposing team

Damien Martyn
Team : Australia
Venue : Wellington
Opposition : New Zealand
Score : 165 of 287 (24 x 4) - First Innings

If Gilchrist was all belligerence, this man was the artist. He simply chipped away for his runs and sheer timing sent his shots to the boundary. His strokes were works of art with no wasted effort. A treat for the eyes.

Well, poor NZ. They’ve already lost 4 wickets chasing this mammoth target. Good luck to them.

Later all!

PS : Do see the highlights if you can. I stopped simply because I felt bad for the NZ bowlers. As for the Indo-Pak match. Hope you have alot of patience as DD is showing a ball-by-ball replay

Picture this : A low chair, with great support for the neck and lower back. You are reclining on this relaxing and inviting seat. Faintly, you hear noises in the background talking about teeth, gums and whatnot. You decide to ignore all the background noise and just relax. Then someone asks you to lift your upper body and a plastic protector is placed over your chest. You fall back on the chair, content.

Then someone changes the script.

Out of nowhere comes a tube that is placed in your mouth. It seems to make all sorts of wierd, sucking noises and seems hell bent on removing the last drop of moisture from it’s location. Then a bright light shines in on your face - unforgiving and stark. You hear a voice that says - relax, this might just hurt a little.

Then the assault begins…

All you can hear is the high pitched whine of the ultrasonic drill as it makes an attack at your gum line and threatens to fill your mouth with water. The tube in your hand seems unable to keep up with the influx of water and you think you are about to choke. But somehow it never happens. Up, down, front and back - the war just keeps going. Then, mercifully, the drill moves out. Just when you feel relaxed, the second attack commences. It’s a long metal stick with a bend in one end. Very, very pointy. You can feel it move and catch as it trawls across your teeth. Finally, this intruder leaves…

At this stage, your mouth feels sore…. you just want to run away… But wait - there’s more. A liquid is applied over your teeth and then The Polisher makes an apperance. Moving across the surface of your teeeth at high speed, it makes them tingle - unpleasantly.

Finally you hear the words - Rinse please. Ah - the relief….

Yup - just had the second cleaning session on my teeth. My dentist did tell me this would hurt - and O boy - did it!

Anyway, am recovering right now. Later!

Once in a great while, I get this urge to change the look of my desktop. Get really sick of the normal and look to make it different - at least till the urge wears off. The last time this bug hit, I tried using the Longhorn Transformation Pack , v 8.0. The problem was that it was pretty system intensive and caused instability in my system. In spite of having backups, it still took me a while to get my system back to normal. Unfortunately, it seems that even in the new version, people are still having problems installing/uninstalling the product. The authors are making note of the problem(s) and hopefully, the next version will be more stable in these respects.

After experiencing the problems created by LTP, I swore of skins and themes. But that never lasts While surfing around yesterday, I came across this new pack. It skins your system to look like a MacOS desktop. The only jarring feature is the presence of the taskbar You can have a look at it here. I installed it last night and so far have no problems (touchwood!). Installation and uninstal are very clean and it even creates a System Restore point if you want it to.

Anyway, I’m happy with my new desktop - it looks sleek. Also, those in the mood for the Mac dock, you can check out Aqua Dock. Pretty nifty.

Well, that’s my news. Please let me know what you think of the programs. Until next time….

Dad and I joined swimming at a pool that’s opened up nearby. It’s a two minute walk from our house - and this is one form of exercise I really enjoy. Good fun.

The mercury is soaring in Pune these days with afternoon temperatures in the 40’s. Don’t know whether to ask for a breeze or not - the afternoon winds are dry and hot. If there’s no breeze, the air is so still and hot that it feels like you are in an oven - even your clothes feel hot. My advice - drink a lot of water. It’s really important. The heat here is a dry heat - unlike mumbai, where you perspire and know that there is water loss from the body. There are many cases of sunstroke in this city.

Anyway, new link up on the site - it’s to the dudes at JavaLobby. Do check them out - they do good work.

That’s all from me for now… Later!

Note : See the previous post for details.

Well, the gnomes at Flickr finally allowed me to upload and organize my photos. Plant lovers, head here . New photos also present in the Scapes and Temples sets. Hope you like the pics.

As always, comments, critiques and praise are welcome

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Trip 021, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

D for Dentist : It’s been quite some time since my last trip to the dentist. Since I did have some free time this week, I (read dad), decided to make an appointment. After looking over my teeth, my dentist said I was very lucky. All I needed for my neglect was two sessions of cleaning. Had session one yesterday, and all I remember of it are high pitched sounds, a lot of water and the occasional instruction to rinse my mouth. But my teeth feel a lot better. Second session on saturday.

E for Earthquake : We had a project review on monday. I came back home in the afternoon and decided to catch up a little on my sleep. I was just about to doze off when the bed satrted shaking - not violently, but enough that I took notice of the fact. It continued for about fifteen seconds. I found out later that an earthquake of medium intensity (5.1 on the Richter scale) has struck Western Maharashtra and we were feeling the tremors.

P for Photographs : Major update on the photo scene. Have taken around 30 new photos which I will be putting up slowly. You can find the page here. . I’ll update this link later to point to the set. As usual, most of the photos are of plants and flowers. Been trying to upload and sort them for the last few days, but Flickr and my ISP have foiled my efforts. Will try again later - so keep looking

R for Result : The seventh semester results are in and I pulled off a first class! Of course - in the student world here, that comes at a price. You’re supposed to treat your friends to dinner - and I did. Had a great time

T for Temple : My grandmother had come to visit us, and after the results, she expressed a wish to go to a temple that’s nearly 40Kms away. Most of the road winds it way through a mountain range. And I got to drive. It’s only the second time I’d done it - though dad was there as the voice of expreience to help. The photo you see is the rangoli that is put at the the temple.

Well, that in a nutsell has been last week. Gotta go now and take print outs of my assignments. Later all!

India and Pakistan are back to doing what they do best - entertain people from around the world. Could not watch today’s match live because of college - but I did manage to catch the highlights. Was an interesting first few hours with the ball seaming around the place and a lot of near misses. In that sense, it was a good time for our bowlers and we made a few early breakthroughs.

However, once the early morning moisture wore off and pitch started slowing down, it was a different ball game altogether. When Inzi started taking charge, it looked like Pakistan would stage a recovery. Unfortunately for him, his partners felt the dressing room was a better place and kept getting out. And when Inzi got out - with the score at 156, most of us were confident we’d get them out soon. Kalam had other ideas. He took the attack to us - and the pitch wasn’t as conducive as it had been in the morning. Along with (decidedly nervous) tail enders, he managed to take the score past 300 before he was castled by a beautiful delivery by Balaji. That more or less wrapped up the innings for Pakistan. In the process Balaji picked up his first 5 wicket haul. Now all we need to do is bat sensibly for the next two days and try to bowl Pakistan out after that. Come on India!

It’s on bad, watching the match on DD. The problem lies in the show - optimistically called The Fourth Umpire that Doordarshan seems hell bent on inflicting on the helpless viewer. It “starts” Charu Sharma (ex star sports, ESPN), Krish Srikkanth (ex India player), Atul Wassan (who??) and some floozie whose only job is to smile and ask memorized questions. The “analysis” is bad and the show format is really, really boring. How I miss the telecasts on ESPN/Star where we had Boycott, Gavaskar, Shastri, et al.

Anshul put up a favorable review for Angels and Demons. When I get the time (hopefully in the next few days) - i’ll try to take it apart. Hey - need two sides to an argument right

The last couple of weeks have been really, really hectic. What my seniors said about the final year is finally sinking in. Deadlines are going woosh all the time. It’s pretty fun though - prioritizing and dispatching all of the work that’s busy piling up all around. The last two weeks went in assignments and the project. Today is a holiday - not the whole day though - just a few hours.

The trouble with the project is that all the peripheral modules are ready. But these really do nothing on their own. They are called as and when required by the main module. This is what we’re trying to code now. The good thing is that our documentation has been systematically done. This basically means that all the class names, funtion names, variables et al are clearly defined and ready for reference. Even so, it’s taking time. We’ve finished the skeleton and are tacking on the most basic modules to check the integration. Will try to finish it off in the next ten days.

In the middle of this coding session, we have deadlines for journals and assignments. So from coding in java, we move to coding in C, doing shell programming, (D)HTML and VRML. Enough to make any head spin. But as I said - we’re (i.e my team and I) are still on the top of our game. Hopefully by thursday, the assignment work will be complete.

You know, I used to believe that visits made by politicians were of no practical value. But now I take that back. Yesterday, we had no less than six Union ministers visit our college. Over the last week, the college buildings (clean to begin with) were repainted, the compound walls were repainted, a new door (entrance) was erected, our parking was shifted and the best one of the lot - the approach road to the college was made remade. Oh yes - no one knows about my college road. Stupid me. You see the road to our college is made of three distinct parts. Part one is the main road. This has just undergone repair and concretization and is a very smooth road. Part three is the college owned road - which is very good as well. The problem was Part two. This road was *bad*. Rocky, stony and covered with gravel. Apparently, there was some dispute between the municipality and the local administration to who had rights on the road. However, all that went outof the window when the ministers decided to visit. Within a week, the road was laid and completed. God bless our leaders

Well, that’s all from me now. My coding beckons me and I am once again in thrall….